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Wednesday, 17 April 2013

Dangote To Build $8bn Oil Refinery In Nigeria

Africa’s richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, plans to invest
up to $8bn to build a Nigerian oil refinery with a capacity of around 400,000
barrels a day by late 2016, the tycoon told Reuters on Tuesday.

“This will really help not only Nigeria but sub-Saharan Africa.
There has not been a new refinery for a long time in sub-Saharan Africa,”
Dangote said in a telephone interview.This will almost double Nigeria’s current
refining capacity.

The country currently has the capacity to produce some
445,000 barrels per day among four refineries, but they operate well below that
owing to decades of mismanagement and corruption in Africa’s leading energy
producer.

Nigeria, the continent’s second-biggest economy, relies on
subsidised imports for 80 per cent of its fuel needs.

A surge in domestic capacity would be welcomed by investors
in Nigeria, but it would cut into profits made by European refiners and oil
traders who would lose part of that lucrative market.

Dangote said the country’s ability to import fuel would soon
be challenged.

“In five years, when our population is over 200 million, we
won’t have the infrastructure to receive the amount of fuel we use. It has to
be done,” he said.

Past efforts to build refineries have often been delayed or
cancelled, but analysts have said Dangote should be able to build a profitable
Nigerian refinery, owing to his past successes in industry and his strong
government connections.

The Dangote Group’s cement manufacturing, basic food
processing and other industries have helped lift his personal fortune to
$16.1bn from $2.1bn in 2010, according to the latest Forbes estimate.

Nigeria has two refineries in its main Port Harcourt oil
hub, one in the Niger Delta town of Warri, and one in Kaduna in the North that
serve 170 million people. Not one of them functions at full capacity.

Analysts have said previous attempts to get the refineries
going have been held back by vested interests such as fuel importers profiting
from the status quo. Dangote said this concerned him.

“The people who were supposed to invest in refineries, who
understand the market, are benefiting from there being no refineries because of
the fuel import business,” he said. “Some … are going to try to … interfere.”

Nigeria’s government subsidises fuel imports to keep pump
prices well below the market rate at a cost of billions of dollars a year. Fuel
subsidies are the single biggest item on the country’s budget.

Dangote said making a new refinery run at a profit would
work even if the government failed to scrap the subsidised fuel price that has
deterred others from investing.